Friday, 26 February 2016

The run up
to a new cricket season is markedly different for an old(ish) man – a man
perhaps able to count his remaining cricket campaigns on the badly gnarled
fingers of one hand – than it is for a fresh-faced, bright-eyed youngster. Back
when I was a teenager, life stretching out before me as a seemingly endless
sweep of run-soaked summers, my pre-season thoughts were usually little more
than idle daydreams – the usual fantasies of scoring 1000-plus runs, cup final
centuries, hooking this or that West Indian pro out of the ground.

As you get
longer in the tooth your horizons draw in, and you merely hope your body
survives the five months without breaking. You hope, too, that your enthusiasm
isn’t snuffed out by the various off-field duties and dramas that come with
seniority and responsibility. Having already lost the buzz once, in 2010, after
which I stopped playing for three years, I now know what the warning signs are.
But the beauty of that three-year hiatus, I later discovered, was that my focus
shifted away from myself, and my own diminishing powers, and onto the young
players in my team, helping them develop their talents. Pass on some wisdom,
learn about their personalities.

Of course,
there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with those lofty individual ambitions of youth, since to take care of your own
contribution is almost always going to help the team realize its collective
goals. Nevertheless, it’s easy to become too excitable, too fixated on personal
targets, build it up too much. As a batsman, a slow start to the season – a few
unplayable balls, a couple of bad decisions, a run out, an abandonment or two –
can mean those initial targets become more or less unattainable, and therefore oppressive,
a numerical reminder of the “failure” that the season is shaping up to be. We
can be our own worst enemies.

My best
ever season in terms of runs started fairly slowly. I don’t remember the
details (I have it written down in some dusty folder somewhere, when such
things seemed to matter a lot and before there was the Internet to document it
for you), but it wasn’t until late July that I really got going. I was heading
to Spain for my university gap year in October and so, to earn some cash, spent
a couple of months working at the Creda plant in Blythe Bridge, loading the
parts for white goods into big kilns then taking them off again. Then putting
others on, then taking them off. The tedium of the work made me appreciate the weekend’s
cricket all the more. Crucially, it made my thinking much clearer. It made me
value my wicket more.

the good old days

I ended up
scoring 895 league runs that year, but during those last six or seven weeks of
the season I didn’t think about aggregates or targets. I just batted. I was ‘in
the zone’. Relaxed concentration. The game was easy. The noise in my head was
off, for once. Yep, I just batted.

And that’s
the thing about targets: if you’re going to have them, they should be about the process not the endresult. That’s something of a sports psychology cliché these days,
but it’s true. And it’s true because it works. What focusing on process not
outcomes means is that you should draw in the frame of reference for “What I
want to do” from the whole season to the next game, the next hour, the next over,
the next delivery… Stay in the process.

Simplifying
a little, that process boils down to three things, depending on the discipline.
For batting, it’s decision-making. For bowling, it’s pressure. For fielding,
it’s awareness (or concentration, you could call it).

Making the
right decisions as a batsman of course requires several skills: judging the
pitch and which shots are on, which not; working out each bowler’s threat and
how they’re trying to get you out; assessing the scoreboard situation and what
needs to be done. None of this is in your head as the bowler is running up, of
course. It’s done between balls, in conversation with yourself, and between
overs, in conversation with your partner.

For a
bowler, maintaining pressure also requires several ancillary calculations: what
each batsman’s strengths are and what fields to set; what’s in the wicket for
you and what the condition of the ball might allow; what the game situation
requires, etc. Nevertheless, the process is all about maintaining pressure, being patient.

As for fielding,
and awareness,that’s simply about being tuned into what the team is trying to do
– i.e. what a hyper-precise skipper wants when he moves you three yards this
way, two yards that – and what the batsman is trying to do to counter it. And
it is about keeping the team buoyant, switched on, optimistic.

In his
autobiography, Out of My Comfort Zone, the great Australian skipper
Steve Waugh wrote that “fielding is a true test of players sacrificing
themselves for the interest of the team because it’s the only facet of the game
where you don’t get statistically rewarded for your efforts”. And that is
precisely the point about making a slow start to the season, falling short of
your targets, be that as a batsman or a bowler. If you don’t hit the ground
running, you can still make a contribution that isn’t statistically rewarded.
Be a good teammate. Keep the troops going on those hot afternoons. Encourage
your mates out there scrapping hard to get you a total. Take your weary
bowler’s jumper to the umpire. Polish the ball. Go and console a fielder who’s
dropped an important catch. Buy the skipper four or five pints of lager because
you love him. Step out of your bubble (it’s stressful in there), think about
what the team needs, and keep putting in the pot.

Wednesday, 3 February 2016

The latest blog for ESPNcricinfo (given a much snappier title than I've managed) was supposed to be a general look at the way broadcasters are encroaching on the game, particularly T20, asking whether, in the main, this was a good or bad thing, and in what ways.

Then something happened. I was watching the 1st Australia vs India T20I at Adelaide when a quite extraordinary 2 minutes 20 seconds of live international cricket broadcasting happened, involving the current Australian Test captain (though not skipper on this occasion) Steven Smith talking live while batting to the three Channel 9 commentators, Mark Nicholas, Mike Hussey and Ian Healy. It lasted one Ravindra Jadeja over. It ended in Smith's dismissal and a rather animated send-off from Virat Kohli.

So I wrote about that incident, and the wider implications of having players wired up and conversing with commentators.

Smith: Might have to run hard
here. Pretty long boundary straight. We’ll see how we go.

Finch drives to deep
cover. Smith calls “yep” and scurries to get on strike.

Nicholas: Now, are you
pre-meditating or not?

Smith: When do I premeditate?!

Nicholas (laughing): Yeah, yeah.

Jadeja in. Smith works
the ball from outside off to deep mid-wicket.

Smith (to Finch): Yeah, push, c’mon!

They settle for one.

Hussey: That’s really
interesting, Steve: no premeditation at this stage. You’re just seeing the ball
and looking to react to it? Smith: Oh yeah, you never know
what’s going through our minds.

Jadeja is already running into bowl.
Finch drives out into the covers.

Smith (to Finch): Just the one, mate. Smith (to Hussey): You never know mate. You’ve just got to watch the ball
and see what happens.

Smith is on strike for
the final ball of the over.

Healy: He’s darting them in,
angled in to the right-handers. 103kph.

It’s unclear whether this is commentary
or advice. Smith tries to work a ball from outside off stump through the
completely open midwicket region. He gets a leading edge to extra-cover, where
Virat Kohli takes the catch and proceeds to give Smith a send-off.

Nicholas: Steve Smith is out,
and he’s unable to talk us through that. Understandably. What a disappointment:
21 to Steve Smith.

The pavilion at Great Chell: symbol of the precariousness of all clubs

It has been
a winter of expansion – not only of my waistline, but also of the NSSCL. Indeed, the
winter’s cricketing activity has been dominated by the NSSCL restructuring,
with several new additions coming in (including our own Sri Lankan enclave,
Moddershall Phoenix, straight in at the fifth tier) and a raft of major and
minor changes.

Primarily,
the expansion serves to reward ambitious clubs, allowing them access to the
area’s premier cricket competition. The restructuring into a ten-division
ladder is for the same purpose: to reward well-run, ambitious clubs. In theory, allowing a club’s 2nd XI to progress up as high as the second tier of local cricket (providing
they’re below the 1st XI, of course) means they can offer youngsters not quite
ready for the 1st XI (and seniors no longer good enough) the best possible
standard of cricket, rather than, at best, fifth tier. In turn, this hopefully enables
them to keep those youngsters that they have developed at the club for longer (with
the knock-on effect of preserving a club’s playing identity, of slowing down
the revolving door) rather than having them cherry-picked by fly-by-night,
house-of-cards clubs with plenty of money but no infrastructure who are able (they will say) to offer 1st XI
cricket.

Not only
that, clubs that are currently struggling
for numbers yet still retain a dedicated core of players will not be punished,
or even forced to close, for not being able to put out two Saturday sides. If
you can muster up eleven, you can still play (without having to meet
unattainable ECB Clubmark goals). So, sensible all round.

While the
restructuring is all perhaps a little confusing at the minute – why are
Moddershall A still called Moddershall A if it’s a straight ladder? Why not
Moddershall 1sts through to 5ths? Does this affect the starring system? – the
changes nevertheless serve to illustrate the broader reality that the league is a continually evolving entity (even if it was more comforting and less
disorienting when it was 1A and 1B, mirrored by 2A and 2B!).

Moddershall
ourselves were beneficiaries of this evolution in late 1989, when the folding
of one of the league’s founder members, Great Chell, allowed us into the NSSCL. We haven’t looked back. A season later, Chell (who had a phenomenal
pavilion, the Lord’s of the Potteries)
re-emerged, having merged with another founder member, Sneyd (whose pavvy
wasn’t quite so salubrious), before both clubs bit the dust. In the 1960s they
had West Indies Test players as pros, today they are a memory. A salutary lesson.

"The Lord's of the Potteries" [Chell photos provided by Gary Stanyer]

In our
early NSSCL days, we played many times against clubs that are either no longer
with us, or no longer members of the league: Nantwich, Crewe Rolls-Royce, Haslington, Buxton (it would
have been quite an early alarm-call, trekking from there to Norton-in-Hales for
a 12pm start in September: Derbyshire to Shropshire for a North Staffs & South Cheshire fixture!!). Nantwich left in the
mid-nineties and have since gone on to win the Cheshire County League on a
number of occasions. They were another of the NSSCL’s founder member clubs, one of the
dozen that started out in 1963 (coincidentally, the year that one-day cricket began, in the form of the Gillette Cup).

As well as
Chell, Sneyd and Nantwich, the other NSSCL founder members were Stone, Crewe LMR (today, Crewe), Longton,
Leek, Knypersley, Norton, Bignall End, Newcastle &Hartshill and Porthill Park. These clubs were predominantly based in the
Potteries or in other sizeable towns, and their respective current fortunes – five
in the Premier League, three defunct, three down the pyramid, one elsewhere – show
just how difficult it can be to sustain a club’s strength (be that on the field
or in its social aspect) over a long period. It’s hard work, and requires
thousands and thousands of small acts of investment of time, love and energy
(not to mention, for some of those founder members still in the top flight, a well-thumbed
chequebook).

The NSSCL’s
first great expansion took place in 1981, when several clubs took the plunge
and sought out a better grade of recreational cricket – the likes of Cheadle,
Little Stoke, Caverswall and Elworth, all of whom have won the NSSCL, as well
as Leycett, Kidsgrove, Stafford, Burslem, Barlaston, Betley, Buxton and Crewe
RR, who haven’t won the NSSCL. And in some cases, for various reasons, won’t.

Everybody
played everybody once during that 1981 season. The top dozen went into 1A, the rest
into 1B, with second teams shadowing them in 2A and 2B respectively. My dad’s club, Little Stoke,
finished level on points with another team (I forget which) smack bang in the
middle of the table, meaning they had to contest a playoff. It was at Great
Chell, funnily enough (maybe the opposition was Great Chell themselves). It was
tense. There were several abandonments. Little Stoke engaged the Derbyshire
opener (and sometime Staffordshire
Academy head coach) Alan
Hill as sub-pro. He made quite a few good but ultimately fruitless scores. On one occasion, he
stroked 80 and it snowed. It was eventually resolved in the early weeks of
October. I forget the result. It’s not important. It’s the
exploring-the-massive-pavilion that counts.

After this
first Great Leap Forward, there was an occasional dribble of newcomers, usually
the best of the old North Staffs and District League, one of the oldest in the
country and the chief casualty of NSSCL expansionism. First it was Audley and Ashcombe Park in the mid-eighties. Next Moddershall
got in, then not long after that it was Checkley and Meir Heath, followed by
Haslington.

Audley CC

At some
point after that (my history is sketchy and the NSSCL Library has not yet been
built), they introduced a one-up one-down backdoor (or trapdoor) entryway to the NSSCL, designed to offer an incentive to
the restless, ambitious clubs in NSDL while quelling its officials by preserving
the latter’s identity. But NSDL were fighting the historical tide – fighting
evolution – and in 2005 the NSSCL expanded to four divisions, split into A and
B sections (with the NSDL folding and living on as a midweek competition),
which is where we have been, with a few changes in the cast, until the League’s
November AGM last year.

So
now we have Milford Hall (who, I’m told, don’t get along with our junior section),
Sandbach, and Onneley & Maer to add to the long list of NSSCL clubs. But what
do all the new changes amount to? I don’t really know, beyond turning up on a
Saturday with enough white clothes not to embarrass yourself by having to wear
someone else’s, and trying your best for your team, for your mates... But what
this potted history does show us is that Moddershall, for a rural club (I mean,
we are not even in a village!), punches far, far above its weight. You only
need glance at the list of NSSCL winners over the first 53 years of competition
to see that.

The
four clubs that have won more NSSCL titles than us were all founder members of
the League. Crewe’s last title was in 1986,
and their next won’t be any time soon. Stone may have won twice as many NSSCL
titles as us (boosted by winning the last two year’s Premier Leagues, of
course) but they have also played over twice as many seasons (2016, our 27th
year in NSSCL, will see us having been members of the league for half its
lifespan).

Of the five
other clubs to have won, like us, a trio of titles, four were founder members
of the league (and one of them owed two of its titles to the current Moddershall
groundsman, on an early-career three-year pro’s assignment), albeit two of
those four are no longer NSSCL clubs. The fifth, Audley, an excellent club, joined
in 1986, four years before us. That means only Longton has a better “seasons
per title” ratio than we do.

It is a
record of which we can be justifiably proud, particularly given that every
other club to have won three or more NSSCL titles has a significant population
base on its doorstep from which they can draw. Not only that, the absence from the
list of clubs with far greater financial resources than Moddershall
demonstrates just how difficult it is to win.

But it is
also a record on which we cannot afford to dwell. The league evolves, some clubs
prosper, others decline. The only thing that’s permanent is change, as they say.
There can be no complacency, no time for feeling sorry for ourselves because a
few good players have jumped ship, for one reason or another.

Given a
fair wind, it is within the compass of the present group of 1st XI players and
the quickly improving cricketers rising from the junior ranks to ink
Moddershall’s name on to that NSSCL roll of honour for a fourth time. And when
it happens, it will be the best thing they'll do in local cricket.

The ninth in the All Out Cricket Shire Brigade series took me to Lancashire. This made it half the counties chalked off on this first lap (assuming it will be recommissioned, and I don't, or even that I'll get to 18), having previously done Notts, Somerset, Northants, Durham, Warwickshire, Kent, Essex and Hampshire. Or Luke Fletcher, Pete Trego, Steven Crook, Colonel Mustard, Ian Westwood, Stevo, Foster and James Tomlinson. The obvious choice for Lancs would have been Glenn Chapple, but unfortunately that couldn't be sorted. After that, it seemed as though current skipper Steve Croft would be the most "cult". While he's certainly a fan favourite, I had been warned by a journalist from one of the Lancashire locals that he was hard work as an interviewee, either because he was a bit dull or, more charitably, because he didn't feel he should open up for the press. Either way, there wasn't a huge amount of quotable material by the time we'd done. Not that he was a bad stick.... Shire Brigade 09: Steven Croft

Darts. The national sport of Stoke-on-Trent. Obligatory to like it, therefore. And like it I do, although a fair bit of it through gritted teeth: the commentary, the walk-ons, those inane fucking chants that never stop.

I decided to make it the topic of a Cricinfo article, largely because it was on the TV every day and I'd been down to Ally Pally for a mate's 30th birthday, but also because I could think of four or five darts-and-cricket connections, including the bonkers Fred Trueman-presented TV show The Indoor League,Cook playing (Jimmy, not Bob or Gary) Anderson on TV, Graeme Swann revealing in a questionnaire I sent him what his darts nickname would be, and Freddie Flintoff's commentary when MvG threw a nine-darter in Blackpool. In the process of 'researching' the piece, I also discovered that Fred had teamed up with Davina McCall to present a Sky TV gameshow called One Hundred and Eighty. I thought it would be execrable – I mean, it was Davina effin' McCall (and her attempt to do the One Hundred and Eighty call is feeble) – but I found myself getting into it. A lot. Check it out on The YouTube. Meanwhile, have a read of this: T20's Spiritual Brother

He got some stick from the Poms (especially Boycott). And from the Aussies. But he gave precisely no fucks. He got stuck in. He did a job. He wasn't neurotic. And, given that he played a lot of cricket with Kallis, Smith, Steyn, Boucher, Amla, Morkel et al, he was mighty good fun to chat to: self-effacing without being meek, cheeky without being infantile or too laddish.

That said, if you're going to phone a bad line in South Africa, try not to do it from a bad line in rural England. With the dictaphone too close to the regular phone, creating feedback. Especially if the guy has a really bassy Saffer accent. Because it isn't at all difficult to transcribe that. Gleanings: Paul Harris

The first I heard of James Tomlinson was when Moddershall's professional, Imran Tahir signed for Hampshire midway through our 2008 title-winning campaign. Hampshire were struggling at the time and Immy gave them instant cutting edge, taking 12 for 183 on debut, and 44 wickets in seven games, as they avoided relegation from Division One.

But he wasn't the only bowler who did well for them that year. James Tomlinson took 67 wickets with his lively left-arm swingers, the most in the County Championship (either division). He's also a thoroughly nice bloke, as I found out when I had a chat to him for the All Out Cricket Shire Brigade series, which shows off his all-round good-eggedness.

Everyone in cricket remembers the quickest bowlers they faced. The heightened awareness, the sense of limits, the physiological messages that "you shouldn't really be doing this, you're out of your depth".

For me, there are four, plus a couple of others that bowled the odd sharp ball. In chronological order, rather than speedgun, first there was Barrington Browne, the most beautiful bowling action I've ever seen. Then there was Mick Lewis, twitching and spitting and swearing, a man who looked like the guy from Green Day who would go on to bowl the most expensive spell in the history of ODIs.

The fourth express paceman was Tino Best, a story I've told a few times. But before him, while having a two-year sabbatical from Moddershall with Wollaton in the Notts Premier League, was Mark Footitt, the left-arm quick who carried the drinks and bowled at cones all winter. At 30 years of age, and with next Test tour going to India, Footy is unlikely to get himself a Test cap, especially with Finn and Wood (not to mention Woakes, Jordan and Plunkett) vying for the third seamer's position.

You never know, and a good debut season in Div One with Surrey might convince the selectors to give him a run. It's odds against, mind. And my own experience of playing against him as a raw 21-year-old would suggest that he isn't quite up to scratch.

Still, it was fun hearing Footitt stories from one or two old comrades and foes, most of which went into this ESPNcricinfo blog – which, again, has a slightly clunky title. I'd have gone for: Fast-Tracked Footitt a Lesson in Perseverance (or a synonym of the last word beginning with 'f'). 'The Cordon': Memories of Mark Footitt's club career

Monday, 1 February 2016

At the back end of last summer I was asked by All Out Cricket editor Phil Walker to write something about the hallowed club pro: the greats and not-so-greats, the upside and downside, a few yarns. I'm not entirely sure whether he realized that I'd written something very similar for them a couple of years earlier (while he was editor) but I was happy to oblige.

However, time soon caught up with me and I found the deadline approaching with no work having been done. One Friday in September, the day of the deadline I headed to London for the Lord's one-day final, having explained to Phil, using a mixture of truth and white lie, why I hadn't yet filed.

I arrived at my mate's house (he was in Devon) and stayed up till 4am working furiously on this and another piece for AOC. Then I turned in for what was a smidge over 4 hours' kip, then dragged myself across town to Lord's.

Upon arrival, I checked the seating plan for where to park myself and my totally knackered Dell laptop and USB keyboard (keeping it real at the Home of Cricket). Who should I be sitting next to? Yep, Phil Walker. Ace. Only, he hadn't arrived. Acer. So I cracked on with writing about Sobers and Learie Constantine, SF Barnes and Shane Warne. But then he did arrive. Arse.

I apologised for my slackness with the Pros prose. He said: "No problem. Monday's good."

I apologised for my slackness with the piece about Staffordshire's 1000th game. He said: "No problem. We're pushing that back a month to a different issue." I thought: "Well, you could have fucking told me that yesterday, before I stayed up till 4am working on it." But I said: "Oh, cool." Mainly, because I was in the wrong.

So then we watched the match, a humdinger, and I had a much-needed beer with a couple of journalists before schlepping first to Archway, to pick up the bag I'd travelled down with (as I'd be going to stay with friends in Woking for a couple of days), and then on to Dalston, where I was meeting said friends for drinks before heading on to Hackney Wick to an Altern 8 rave, at which I would start the process of writing about their dancer, Martyn, with whom I'd played junior cricket. I was still awake at 8am, by which stage I was a little bit tired. Still, the piece about the pro's turned out alright. And the strapline calls me a "stalwart clubbie"... Prose and Cons

The pill. The cherry. The tater. The conker. In no other sport is the ball such a crucial component of how the game is played. But then, in no other sport is the ball subject to such dramatic change – some natural wear-and-tear, some, erm, man-made – over the course of its life.

And this is why we love cricket: a ball that is in a process of continuous variation, a pitch that is in a process of continuous variation. An ever new set of conditions to 'read'. The quality of the cricket ball (and the pitches!) therefore plays a hugely significant part in balancing out the cricketing ecosystem, ensuring that neither batters nor bowlers become predators or prey for too long.

And cricket balls had been in the news a lot during the latter part of 2015: first, in the wake of #60allout, various Aussie luminaries advocated their fair nation using the Duke's ball in first-class cricket; then, when the pitches in the Emirates and Cape Town were too flat, people called for them to take up the Duke's, too. And then there was the pink ball to be used in Test cricket's first day-night game...

It was with all this in mind that I went down to East London to speak to Dilip Jadojia, boss of Morrant Sport, who own Duke's, to find out why their hand-stitched ball was better than the much-maligned Kookaburra.

The resulting article was difficult to write up, insofar as it inevitably came quite close to advertorial in places: Dilip's observations about having cricket balls that were good for the game of cricket of course overlap significantly with his commercial interests. That said, there are a good number of second opinions out there who would fully support his claims. All told, it was an interesting two-hour chat with a very, very smart cookie. In quest of a durable cricket ball